At 6ft 8in tall, he would have been easily eligible to compete amongst those giants of sport in the U.S. basketball leagues today.

In third-century AD Rome, where men averaged only about 5ft 6in, he would have been a giant the likes of which most people had never seen.

It's no legend - archaeologists believe have discovered the first complete ancient skeleton of a person with gigantism near the capital of the ancient empire.

Towering: The giant's tibia (shin bone), top, compared with one taken from a normal-sized male of the same era and location

Giganticism is extremely rare, these days affecting only about three individuals in every million worldwide; finding such skeletons dating back to ancient times is almost entirely unheard of.

Although two partial skeletons, one from Egypt and another found in Poland, have been identified as possible cases, the Roman find is the first clear case of gigantism from the ancient past, National Geographic reported.

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Gigantism is a condition leading to excessive growth significantly above the human average. It is caused by overproduction of growth hormone in childhood, before growth plates in the bones have closed.

Archaeologists excavating a necropolis in Fidenae, a territory indirectly managed by Rome, found the skeleton in 1991 buried in an unusually long tomb. But it was only in a later anthropological examination that researchers found the bones were also out of the ordinary.

A team led by Simona Minozzi, a paleopathologist at the University of Pisa, analysed the bones and found evidence of damage to the man's skull consistent with a tumour on the pituitary gland. This would have disrupted the gland, causing it to overproduce human growth hormone and leading to the phenomenal growth.

That was not all. Disproportionately
long limbs and evidence that the youth's bones were still growing even in
early adulthood supported the diagnosis of gigantism.

The world's tallest man today: At 8ft 3in tall Sultan Kösen of Turkey is officially the world's tallest man. He also suffers from pituitary gigantism and the rest of his family are all of normal height

WHAT IS GIGANTISM?

Gigantism is a condition characterized by excessive growth and height significantly above average.

In humans, this condition is caused by over-production of growth hormone in childhood before the long bone epiphyses (growth plates) close, resulting in individuals between 7 feet and 9 feet in height.

The term is typically applied to those whose height is not just in the upper 1 per cent of the population but several standard deviations above mean for persons of the same sex, age, and ethnic ancestry.

Gigantism is usually caused by a tumor on the pituitary gland of the brain, although in some cases the condition can be passed on genetically through a mutated gene.

Many of those who have been identified with gigantism have suffered from multiple health issues involving their circulatory or skeletal system.

Dr Minozzi told National Geographic that evidence also showed the man died young - most likely between 16 and 20 - another finding that could point to the condition, which is linked to a number of health problems.

With imperial Roman high society having what Dr Minozzi described as a 'pronounced taste for entertainers with evident physical malformations' it is more than likely the Fidenae giant was the subject of much curiousity during his life.

However, little could be gleaned about what his life was like from the circumstances of his burial. He was found with no funerary artifacts, which often offer clues about the status of people in the Roman world, although the typical circumstances of his interment suggest he was not excluded from the daily life of his community.

But researchers hope that further investigation of the body will help them better understand how gigantism has developed throughout human history.

Charlotte Roberts, a bioarchaeologist at the Durham University, told National Geographic: 'Normally a doctor will be looking at a patient with a disease over short term span.

'We've been able to look at skeletons from archaeological sites that are thousands of years old. You can start to look at trends of how diseases have changed in frequency over time.'

The study by Dr Minozzi and her team appears in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism.